In general, when a user accesses a site through the Internet or the like, for example, and takes some action such as shopping, for example, on the network, he/she may be required to transmit private information such as the address, the name, the age etc. of the user from the site.
In this regard, there has generally been such a structure that the site presents a privacy policy to the user for clarifying the object of collecting the private information, handling of the collected private information etc. and lets the user transmit the private information upon approval by the user.
In this type of conventional private information protection method, on the other hand, the user acting on the network acts in the name of him/herself, whereby it follows that the private information is also collected in the state revealing the name of the person in question, and hence the user necessarily hesitates to provide the private information to the site, leading to difficulty in collecting the private information on the site. When trying to collect private information of a customer for selecting articles or information suitable for the customer and providing information to the customer, therefore, the site disadvantageously cannot provide sufficient services since sufficient private information is not collected.
As a method of collecting private information of a user accessing the site, there has generally been a method for the site to utilize a cookie (cookie) which is exemplary identification data for tracing what sort of site the user has accessed and collecting information. This method is employed for transmitting and storing identification data (cookie, for example) to a terminal (browser phone (portable telephone) or personal computer) of the user accessing the site and specifying the terminal of the user with the clue of the identification data (cookie, for example) in next access thereby tracing what sort of site he/she accesses and collecting information.
However, there has been such a disadvantage that, when the user transmits his/her name and address from the terminal recording such a trace type cookie, for example, the cookie may be registered in association with the name of the user and the name, the address etc. of the user may thereafter be specified with the clue of the cookie to result in a problem in privacy.
Therefore, the user may act with a personally created pseudonym when accessing the site through the terminal. When taking action such as shopping, for example, with the pseudonym, however, there arises such a new disadvantage that the destination of a purchased article cannot be specified and hence the user cannot obtain the purchased article. Further, no electronic certificate is issued in the case of the pseudonym, and hence it follows that remarkably large restriction is imposed when acting on the network with the pseudonym, resulting in such a disadvantage that the user cannot freely act.
The present invention has been devised in consideration of such circumstances, and an object thereof is to make it possible to easily provide services following sufficient collection of private information on a trader side while protecting private information of a user acting on a network, and to enable the user to freely act on the network.